Counties of Spiegelberg and Pyrmont

The County of Spiegelberg-Pyrmont was formed in 1494, when the Count of Spiegelberg inherited the County of Pyrmont (in part of which—designated here as “Quasi-Vogtei Lügde”—administrative responsibilities were shared with the Bishop of Paderborn). However, the Spiegelberg line died out in 1557, paving the way for an entity whose simplified country name is Lippe-Spiegelberg-Pyrmont over which a member of the House of Lippe had administrative responsibilities. (In addition to Lügde, those responsibilities were shared with Paderborn in Schwalenberg, Oldenburg, and Stoppelberg, so I modify the simplified country name in those cases to Lippe-Pyrmont\Paderborn—dropping the “Spiegelberg” for brevity, but retaining the “Pyrmont” to cover Lügde).

 

Fully specifying the name of that entity, however, is exceptionally complicated because four different nobles exercised sovereignty over parts of it, as follows:

• the Prince of Brunswick-Calenberg was sovereign in Spiegelberg, making it part of Guelphic Germany;
• the Count of Lippe-Detmold was sovereign in the Ämter of Alverdissen, Barntrup, and Sternberg, as well as in Samtamt Schwalenberg and the village of Hagedorn in Samtamt Stoppelberg, making that portion part of Lippian Germany;
• the Count of Lippe-Spiegelberg-Pyrmont (the one with administrative responsibility for the entire entity—a younger brother of the Count of Lippe-Detmold) was sovereign in Pyrmont, making it temporarily part of Lippian Germany; and
• the Bishop of Paderborn was sovereign in Samtamt Oldenburg and the village of Rolfzen in Samtamt Stoppelberg, making that section part of Ecclesiastical Germany.

 

Based on that, I render the fully-specified country name as the County of Lippe-Spiegelberg-Pyrmont except as follows:

• In Spiegelberg: Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneberg/Principality of Calenberg (adm. Lippe-Spiegelberg-Pyrmont);
• In Oldenburg and Rolfzen: Bishopric of Paderborn (adm. shared with Lippe-Spiegelberg-Pyrmont); and
• In Schwalenberg, Hagedorn, and Lügde: County of Lippe-Spiegelberg-Pyrmont (adm. shared with Paderborn).